THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

OF

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

VOLUME XIX OCTOBER 1938 PART 4

ORIGINAL PAPERS

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS
BY
SIGM. FREUD
LONDON

I

It has always seemed to me to be greatly to the credit of a certain
well-known man of science that he treated psycho-analysis fairly at a
time when most other people felt themselves under no such obligation.
On one occasion, nevertheless, he gave expression to an opinion upon
analytic technique which was at once derogatory and unjust. He said
that in giving interpretations to a patient we treat him upon the
famous principle of ‘ Heads I win, tails you lose’. That is to say, if
the patient agrees with us, then the interpretation is right ; but if he
contradicts us, that is only a sign of his resistance, which again shews
that we are right. In this way we are always in the right against the
poor helpless wretch whom we are analysing, no matter how he may
respond to what we put forward. Now, since it is in fact true that a
“No’ from one of our patients is not as a rule enough to make us
abandon an interpretation as incorrect, a revelation such as this of the
nature of our technique has been most welcome to the opponents of
analysis. It is therefore worth while to give a detailed account of how
we are accustomed to arrive at an assessment of the ‘ Yes’ or ‘No’ of
our patients during analytic treatment—of their expression of agree-
ment or of denial. The practising analyst will naturally learn nothing
in the course of this apologia that he does not already know.

It is familiar ground that the work of analysis aims at inducing
the patient to give up the repressions (using the word in the widest
sense) belonging to his early life and to replace them by reactions of a
sort that would correspond better to a mentally mature condition.

377 26

378 SIGM. FREUD

It is with this aim in view that he must be got to recollect certain
experiences and the emotions called up by them which he has at the
moment forgotten. We know thathis present symptoms and inhibitions
are the consequences of repressions of this kind: that is, that they are
a substitute for these things that he has forgotten. What sort of
material does he put at our disposal which we can make use of to put
him on the way to recovering the lost memories ? All kinds of things.
He gives us fragments of these memories in his dreams, invaluable in
themselves but seriously distorted as a rule by all the factors concerned
in the formation of dreams. Again, he produces ideas, if he gives
himself up to “ free association ’, in which we can discover allusions to
the repressed experiences and derivatives of the suppressed emotions
as well as of the reactions against them. And, finally, there are hints
of repetitions of the affects belonging to the repressed material to be
found in actions performed by the patient, some important, some
trivial, both inside and outside the analytic situation. Our experience
has shewn that the relation of transference which becomes established
towards the analyst is particularly calculated to favour the reproduction
of these emotional connections. It is out of such raw material—if we
may so describe it—that we have to put together what we are in search
of.

What we are in search of is a picture of the patient’s forgotten years
that shall be alike trustworthy and in all essential respects complete.
But at this point we are reminded that the work of analysis consists
of two quite different portions, that it is carried on in two separate
localities, that it involves two people, to each of whom a distinct task
isassigned. It may for amoment seem strange that such a fundamental
fact should not have been pointed out long ago ; but it will immediately
be perceived that there was nothing being kept back in this, that it is
a fact which is universally known and even self-evident and is merely
being brought into relief here and separately examined for a particular
purpose. We all know that the person who is being analysed has to be
induceı to remember something that has been experienced by him
and repressed ; and the dynamic determinants of this process are so
interesting that the other portion of the work, the task performed by
the analyst, has been pushed into the background. The analyst has
neither experienced nor repressed any of the material under con-
sideration ; his task cannot be to remember anything. What then is
his task? His task is to make out what has been forgotten from the
traces which it has left behind or, more correctly, to construct it. The

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS 379

time and manner in which he conveys his constructions to the person
who is being analysed, as well as the explanations with which he accom-
panies them, constitute the link between the two portions of the work
of analysis, between his own part and that of the patient.

His work of construction, or, if it is preferred, of reconstruction,
resembles to a great extent an archzologist’s excavation of some
dwelling-place that has been destroyed and buried or of some ancient
edifice. The two processes are in fact identical, except that the analyst
works under better conditions and has more material at his command
to assist him, since what he is dealing with is not something destroyed
but something that is still alive, and perhaps for another reason as
well. But just as the archzologist builds up the walls of the building
from the foundations that have remained standing, determines the
number and position of the columns from digging in the earth and
reconstructs the mural decorations and paintings from the remains
found in the debris, so does the analyst proceed when he draws his
inferences from the fragments of memories, from the associations and
from the behaviour of the subject of the analysis. Both of them have
an undisputed right to reconstruct by means of supplementing and
combining the surviving remains. Both of them, moreover, are subject
to many of the same difficulties and sources of error. One of the most
ticklish problems that confronts the archzologist is notoriously the
determination of the relative age of his finds ; and if an object makes
its appearance in some particular level, it often remains to be decided
whether it belongs to that level or whether it was carried down to that
level owing to some subsequent disturbance. It is easy to imagine
the corresponding doubts that arise in the case of analytic constructions.

The analyst, as we have said, works under more favourable con-
ditions than the archologist since he has at his disposal material
which can have no counterpart in excavations, such as the repetitions
of reactions dating from infancy and all that emerges in connection
with these repetitions through the transference. But in addition to
this it must be borne in mind that the excavator is dealing with
destroyed objects of which large and important portions have quite
certainly been lost, by mechanical forces, by fire and by plundering.
No amount of efiort can result in their discovery, so that they can be
united with the surviving fragments. The one and only course left
open is that of reconstruction, which for this very reason can often
reach only a certain degree of probability. But it is different with
the mental object whose early history the analyst is seeking to recover.

380 SIGM. FREUD

Here we are regularly met by a situation which in archzology occurs
only in such rare circumstances as those of Pompeii or of the tomb of
Tutankhamen. All of the essentials are preserved, even things that
seem completely forgotten are present somehow and somewhere, and
have merely been buried and made inaccessible to the subject. Indeed,
it may, as we know, be doubted whether any mental structure can
really be the victim of total destruction. It depends only upon
analytic technique whether we shall succeed in bringing what is con-
cealed completely to light. There are only two other facts that weigh
against the extraordinary advantage which is thus enjoyed by the
work of analysis : namely, that mental objects are incomparably more
complicated than the excavator’s material ones and that we have
insufficient knowledge of what we may expect to find, since its finer
structure contains so much that is stillmysterious. But our comparison
between the two forms of work can go no further than this; for the
main difference between them lies in the fact that for the archzologist
the reconstruction is the aim and end of his endeavours while for
analysis the construction is only a preliminary labour.

u

It is not, however, a preliminary labour in the sense that the whole
of it must be completed before the next piece of work can be begun,
as, for instance, is the case with house-building, where all the walls
must be erected and all the windows inserted before the internal
decoration of the rooms can be taken in hand. Every analyst knows
that things happen differently in an analytic treatment and that there
both kinds of work are carried on side by side, the one kind being
always a little ahead and the other following upon it. The analyst
finishes a piece of construction and communicates it to the subject of
the analysis so that it may work upon him ; he then constructsa further
piece out of the fresh material pouring in upon him, deals with it in
the same way and proceeds in this alternating fashion until the end.
If, in accounts of analytic technique, so little is said about ‘con-
structions’, that is because ‘interpretations”’ and their effects are
spoken of instead. But I think that “ construction ” is by far the more
appropriate description. ‘ Interpretation ’ applies to something that
‚one does to some single element of the material, such as an association
or a parapraxis. But it is a ‘ construction ’ when one lays before the
subject of the analysis a piece of his early history that he has forgotten,
in some such way as this: ‘ Up to your »th year you regarded yourself

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS 381

as the sole and unlimited possessor of your mother ; then came another
baby and brought you grave disillusionment. Your mother left you
for some time, and even after her reappearance she was never again
devoted to you exclusively. Your feelings towards your mother became
ambivalent, your father gained a new importance for you’, ... . and
soon.

In the present paper our attention is turned exclusively to this
preliminary labour performed by constructions. And here, at the very
start, the question arises of what guarantee we have while we are working
‚on these constructions that we are not making mistakes and risking the
success of the treatment by putting forward some construction that is
incorrect. It may seem that no general reply can in any event be
given to this question ; but even before discussing it we may lend our
ear to some comforting information that is afforded by analytic
experience. For we learn frorn it that no damage is done if, for once
ina way, we make a mistake and offer the patient a wrong construction
as the probable historic truth. A waste of time is, of course, involved,
and anyone who does nothing but present the patient with false
combinations will neither create a very good impression on him nor
carry the treatment very far; but a single mistake of the sort can do
no harm. What in fact occurs in such an event is rather that the
patient remains as though he were untouched by what has been said
and reacts to it with neither a ‘ Yes’nora ‘No’. This may possibly
mean no more than that his reaction is postponed ; but if nothing
further develops we may conclude that we have made a mistake and
we shall admit as much to the patient at some suitable opportunity
without sacrificing any of our authority. Such an opportunity will
arise when some new material has come to light which allows us to
make a better construction and at the same time to correct our error.
In this way the false construction drops out, as though it had never
been made ; and, indeed, we often get an impression as though, to
borrow the words of Polonius, our bait of falsehood had taken a carp
of truth, The danger of our leading a patient astray by suggestion,
by persuading him to accept things which we ourselves believe but
which he ought not to, has certainly been enormously exaggerated.
An analyst would have had to behave very incorrectly before such a
misfortune could overtake him ; above all, he would have to blame
himself with not allowing his patients to have their say. I can assert
without boasting that such an abuse of ' suggestion ’ has never occurred
in my practice.

382 SIGM. FREUD

It already follows from what has been said that we are not at all
inclined to neglect the indications that can be inferred from the
patient’s reaction when we have ‚offered him one of our constructions,
The point must be gone into in detail. It is true that we do not accept
the ‘No’ of a person under analysis at its face value ; but neither do
we allow his ‘ Yes’ to pass. There is no justification for accusing us
of invariably twisting his remarks into an assent. In reality things
are not so simple and we do not make it so easy for ourselves to come
to a conclusion.

A plain ‘ Yes ’ from a patient is by no means unambiguous. It can
indeed signify that he recognizes the correctness of the construction
that has been presented to him ; but it can also be meaningless, or
can even deserve to be described as “hypocritical’, since it may be
convenient for his resistance to make use of an assent in such circum-
stances in order to prolong the concealment of a truth that has not
been discovered. The ‘Yes’ has no value unless it is followed by
indirect confirmations, unless the patient, immediately after his
“ Yes’, produces new memories which complete and extend the con-
struction. Only in such an event do we consider that the ‘ Yes’ has
dealt completely with the subject under discussion.

A ‘No’ from a person in analysis is no more unambiguous than a
‘Yes’, and is indeed of even less value. In some rare cases it turns
out to be the expression of a legitimate dissent. Far more frequently
it expresses a resistance which may have been evoked by the subject-
matter of the construction that has been put forward but which may
just as easily have arisen from some other factor in the complex
analytic situation. Thus, a patient’s ‘No’ is no evidence of the
correctness of a construction, though it is perfectly compatible with it.
Since every such construction is an incomplete one, since it covers
only a small fragment of the forgotten events, we are free to suppose
that the patient is not in fact disputing what has been said to him but
is basing his contradiction upon the part that has not yet been dis-
covered. Asa rule he will not give his assent until he has learnt the
whole truth—which often covers a very great deal of ground. So that
the only safe interpretation of his ‘ No ’ is that it points to incomplete-
ness ; there can be no doubt that the construction has not told him
everything.

It appears, therefore, that the direct utterances of the patient after
he has been offered a construction afford very little evidence upon the
question whether we have been right or wrong. It is of all the greater

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS 383

interest that there are indirect forms of confirmation which are in every
respect trustworthy. One of these is a form of words that is used
(almost as though there were a conspiracy) with very little variation
by the most different people : ‘ I’ve never thought (or, I should never
have thought) that (or, of that) ’. This can be translated without any
hesitation into: ‘ Yes, you’ve hit the unconscious right this time.’
Unfortunately this formula, which is so welcome to the analyst, reaches
his ears more often after single interpretations than after he has pro-
duced an extensive construction. An equally valuable confirmation
is implied (expressed this time positively) when the patient answers
with an association which contains something similar or analogous to
the subject-matter of the construction. Instead of taking an example
of this from an analysis (which would be easy to find but lengthy to
deseribe) I prefer to give an account of a small extra-analytical experi-
ence which presents a similar situation so strikingly that it produces
an almost comic effect. It concerned one of my colleagues who—it
was long ago—had chosen me as a consultant in his medical practice.
One day, however, he brought his young wife to see me, as she was
causing him trouble. She refused on all sorts of pretexts to have
sexual relations with him, and what he expected of me was evidently
that I should lay before her the consequences of her ill-advised
behaviour. I went into the matter and explained to her that her
refusal would probably have unfortunate results for her husband’s
health or would lay him open to temptations that might lead to a
break-up of their marriage. At this point he suddenly interrupted me
with the remark : “ The Englishman you diagnosed as suffering from
a cerebral tumour has died too.’ At first the remark seemed incom-
prehensible ; the “ too ’ in his sentence was a mystery, for we had not
been speaking of anyone else who had died. But a short time after-
wards I understood. The man was evidently intending to confirm
what I had been saying; he was meaning to say: ‘Yes, you're
certainly quite right. Your diagnosis was confirmed in the case of the
other patient too.’ It was an exact parallel to the indirect confirmations
that we obtain in analysis from associations. I will not attempt to
deny that there were other thoughts as well, put on one side by my
colleague, which had a share in determining his remark.

Indirect confirmation from associations that fit in with the content
of a construction—that give us a ‘too’ like the one in my story—
provide a valuable basis for judging whether the construction is likely
to be confirmed in the course of the analysis. It is particularly striking

384 SIGM. FREUD

when a confirmation of this kind slips into a direct denial by means of
a parapraxis. Ionce published elsewhere a nice example of this. The
name ‘ Jauner ’ (a familiar one in Vienna) came up repeatedly in one
of my patient’s dreams without a sufficient explanation appearing in
his associations. I finally put forward the interpretation that when he
said ‘ Jauner ’ he probably meant ‘ Gauner ’ [swindler], whereupon he
promptly replied: “That seems to me too “ jewagt.” [instead of
““ gewagt ” (far-fetched)].” Or there was the other instance, in which,
when I suggested to a patient that he considered a particular fee too
high, he meant to deny the suggestion with the words ‘ Ten dollars
mean nothing to me’ but instead of dollars put in a coin of lower
denomination and said ‘ ten shillings ’.

If an analysis is dominated by powerful factors that impose a
negative therapeutic reaction, such as a sense of guilt, a masochistic
need for suffering or a striving against receiving help from the analyst,
the patient’s behaviour after he has been offered a construction often
makes it very easy for us to arrive at the decision that we are in search
of. If the construction is wrong, there is no change in the patient ;
but if it is right or gives an approximation to the truth, he reacts to it
with an unmistakable aggravation of his symptoms and of his general
condition.

‘We may sum the matter up by asserting that there is no justification
for the reproach that we neglect or underestimate the importance of
the attitude taken up by those under analysis towards our construc-
tions. We pay attention to them and often derive valuable information
from them. But these reactions on the part of the patient are rarely
unambiguous and give no opportunity for a final judgement. Only
the further course of the analysis enables us to decide upon the correct-
ness or uselessness of our constructions. We do not pretend that an
individual construction is anything more than a conjecture which
awaits examination, confirmation or rejection. We claim no authority
for it, we require no direct agreement from the patient, nor do we
argue with him if at first he denies it. In short, we conduct ourselves
upon the model of a familiar figure in one of Nestroy’s farces—the
man-servant who has a single answer on his lips to every question or
objection: “In the course of future developments everything will
become clear.’

III

It is hardy worth while describing how this occurs in the Process

of the analysis—the way in which our conjecture is transformed into

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS 385

the patient’s conviction. All of this is familiar to every analyst from
his daily experience and is intelligible without difficulty. Only one
point requires investigation and explanation. The path that starts
from the analyst’s construction ought to end in the patient's recol-
lection ; but it does not always lead so far. Often enough we do not
succeed in bringing the patient to recollect what has been repressed.
Instead of that, if the analysis is carried out correctly, we produce in
him an assured conviction of the truth of the construction which
achieves the same therapeutic result as a recaptured memory. The
problem of what the circumstances are in which this occurs and of how
it is possible that what appears to be an incomplete substitute should
nevertheless produce a complete result—all of this is material for a
later enquiry.

I shall conclude this brief paper with a few remarks which open up
a wider perspective. I have been struck by the manner in which, in
certain analyses, the communication of an obviously apt construction
has evoked in the patients a surprising and at first incomprehensible
phenomenon. They have had lively recollections called up in them—
which they themselves have described as ‘more than clear ’—but
what they have recollected has not been the event that was the subject
of the construction but details relating to that subject. For instance,
they have recollected with abnormal sharpness the faces of the people
involved in the construction or the rooms in which something of the
sort might have happened, or, a step further away, the furniture in
such rooms—on the subject of which the construction had naturally
no possibility of any knowledge. This has occurred both in dreams
immediately after the construction had been put forward and in
waking states of the nature of a day-dream. These recollections have
themselves led to nothing further and it has seemed plausible to regard
them as the product of a compromise. The ‘upward drive’ of the
Tepressed, stirred into activity by the putting forward of the con-
struction, has striven to carry the important memory-traces into
consciousness ; but a resistance has succeeded—not, it is true, in
stopbing that movement—but in displacing it on to adjacent objects
‚of minor significance.

These recollections might have been described as hallueinations if
a belief in their actual presence had been added to their clearness.
The importance of this analogy seemed greater when I noticed that
true hallucinations occasionally occurred in other cases which were
certainly not psychotic. My line of thought proceeded as follows,

386 SIGM. FREUD

Perhaps it may be a general characteristie of hallueinations to which
sufficient attention has not hitherto been paid that in them something
that has been experienced in infancy and then forgotten re-emerges—
something that the child has seen or heard at a time when it could stil!
hardly speak and that now forces its way into consciousness, probably
distorted and displaced owing to the operation of forces that are
opposed to this re-emergence. And, in view of the close relation
between hallucinations and particular forms of psychosis, our line of
thought may be carried still further. It may be that the delusions into

which these hallucinations are so constantly incorporated may them-
selves be less independent of the upward drive of the unconscious and
the return of the repressed than we usually assume. In the mechanism
of a delusion we stress as a rule only two factors: the turning away
from the real world and its forces on the one hand and the influence
exercised by wish-fulfilment upon the subject-matter of the delusion
on the other. But may it not be that the dynamic process is rather
that the turning away from reality is exploited by the upward drive
of the repressed in order to force its subject-matter into consciousness,
while the resistances stirred up by this process and the tendency to
wish-fulfilment share the responsibility for the distortion and dis-
Placement of what is recollected ? This is after all the same as the
familiar mechanism of dreams, which intuition has for ages long likened
to madness.

This view of delusions is not, I think, entirely new, but it neverthe-
less emphasizes a point of view which is not usually brought into the
foreground. The essence of it is that there is not only method in
madness, as the poet has already perceived, but also a fragment of
historie truth ; and it is plausible to suppose that the compulsive belief
attaching to delusions derives its strength precisely from infantile
sources of this kind. Allthat I can produce to-day in support of this
theory are reminiscences not fresh impressions. It would probably be
worth while to make an attempt to study cases of the disorder in
question on the basis of the hypotheses that have been here put
forward and also to carry out their treatment upon the same lines.
The vain effort would be abandoned of convincing the patient of the
error of his delusion and of its contradiction of reality ; and, on the
contrary, the recognition of its kernel of truth would afford common
ground upon which the therapeutic process could develop. That
process would consist in liberating the fragment of historic truth from
its distortions and its attachments to the actual present day and in

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS 387

leading it back to the point in the past to which it belongs. The trans-
posing of material from a forgotten past on to the present or on to an
expectation of the future is indeed a habitual occurrence in neurotics
no less than in psychotics. Often enough, when a neurotic is led byan
anxiety-state to expect the occurrence of some terrible event, he is in
fact merely under the influence of a repressed memory (which is seeking
to enter consciousness but cannot become conscious) that something
which was at that time terrifying did really happen. I believe that we
should gain a great deal of valuable knowledge from work of this kind
upon psychotics even if it led to no therapeutic success. B

I am aware that it is of small service to handle so important a
subject in the cursory fashion that I have here employed. But none
the less I have not been able to resist the seduction of an analogy.
The delusions of patients appear to me to be the equivalents of the
constructions which we build up in the course of an analytic treat-
ment—attempts at explanation and cure, though it is true that these,
under the conditions of a psychosis, can do no more than replace the
fragment of reality that is being repudiated in the present by another
fragment that had already been repudiated in the remote past. It
will be the task of each individual investigation to reveal the intimate
connections between the material of the present repudiation and that
of the original repression. Just as our construction is only effective
because it recovers a fragment of lost experience, so the delusion owes
its convincing power to the element of historic truth which it inserts
in the place of the rejected reality. In this way a proposition which
I originally asserted only of hysteria would apply also to delusions—
namely, that those who are subject to them are suffering from their

‚own recollections. I never intended by this short formula to dispute
the complexity of the causation of the illness or to exclude the operation
of many other factors.

If we consider mankind as a whole and substitute it for the single
human individual, we discover that it too has developed delusions
which are inaccessible to logical criticism and which contradict reality.
If, in spite of this, they are able to exert an extraordinary power over
men, investigation leads us to the same explanation as in the case of
the single individual. They owe their power to the element of historie
truth which they have brought up from the repression of the forgotten
and primeval past.